Squeeze clamps for flexible tubing, such as the well known Halkey-Roberts clamp, are commonly used in the medical field in sets for conveying medical fluid and blood to and from a patient. For example, Buckman et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,942,228 shows a squeeze clamp similar to the known Halkey-Roberts clamp in which the clamp comprises a strip of plastic which is bent back on itself, so that the ends of the clamp are adjacent to each other. The clamp has open tube apertures, to permit it to be laterally placed onto flexible tubing and used to permit the opening of flow, or the blocking of flow, through the tubing as may be desired.
Other clamps of similar design are known, but in which the flexible fluid flow tube passes through closed apertures, such as the design specifically shown in Utterberg U.S. Pat. No. 08/943,672, filed Oct. 3, 1997, and many other similar clamp designs.
It is often desirable to have a clamp with the open tube apertures connected laterally to the exterior by slots as in the Buckman et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,942,228, so that the clamp can be subsequently added to a manufactured tubing set when that is desired. Clamps which have laterally closed tubing apertures without side slots must of course be threaded or strung onto the particular tubing which carries them in the manufacturing process, usually before the ends of the tubing are attached to a component, preventing addition of the clamp.
However, as a disadvantage, clamps in which the tubing apertures have side slots for lateral connection are thus weakened thereby, since the remaining portion of the strip that is laterally adjacent to the side slot is substantially narrowed and thus weakened by the presence of the side slot and aperture. This can interfere with the function of the squeeze clamp.
While one could simply widen the entire strip that forms the clamp to accommodate this, that provides an overall enlargement to the squeeze clamp which can result in the need for larger packaging when the clamps are packed with a tubular set. This is of course undesirable.
In accordance with the invention, squeeze clamps are provided which utilize side slots connecting to their tubing apertures so that the clamps may be laterally placed onto flexible tubing, and do not need to be threaded onto the tubing from the ends thereof. Nevertheless, these clamps, although overall no wider than corresponding clamps having closed tube apertures without side slots, can still exhibit good quality dynamic action largely free of involuntary torsion or lateral twisting of the clamp, as one attempts to close it, because of weakness of the clamp adjacent the tube apertures with their side slots. According, the clamps may be packaged with sets in a typical coiled form without a need to significantly enlarge the packaging, since the clamps remain overall of the same size as present conventional Halkey-Roberts clamps. However, they have the added advantage of being laterally applicable to flexible tubing of manufactured sets when and as desired.